I’ve begun to keep a log of “distraction time” and it has helped me realize just how much time that one little click actually absorbs. Inevitably, a click over to Facebook means reading statuses, watching a video, forwarding something, hopping over to Twitter for a bit, checking email, and then hopping back over to Facebook to see if someone commented on anything new. Facebook’s very sticky, isn’t it?

Anyway, I enjoy your blog and I’m subscribed to it. Thanks for sharing this little piece of your day.

Not related to current post, but wanted to let you know Cyber Anthropology is included in an attempt at comprehensive anthropology blog list and through 31 December, can vote for 10 best anthropology blogs.

Thank you for your work and this blog. I too, have come to the place in my career where I consider myself an Anthropologist first (eventhough I started as an archaeologist, it wasn’t until I got my PhD in Anthropology that my worldview changed).

This past semester, I have been teaching an Intro to Anth class here at Inver Hills Community College out in Minnesota – and I have focused it on escapism, subculture, and the online environment.

I have used Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks as my Common Book for the class and found it to be very rewarding.

I am using your post here in my class next week on “applied anthropology” – if you have article etc. that you have done in relation to your topics – feel free to forward them on to me (with permissions to use for my class).

Best,

Jeremy Nienow
Anthropology Faculty
IHCC

Wills

What I’ve found particularly interesting — and disturbing — is that the more time I spend online, myself, the harder it becomes to get out of the house at all. All of my teaching for the past year has been online, and by the end of fall term, I was starting to feel anxious about going out. By the middle of winter term, I was sending my husband shopping lists at his work so I could avoid even going to the grocery store. It took a three-week trip to Spain in the summer (during which I was still teaching online classes) to snap me out of it. Drastic measures, indeed.

Not being one with a history of any particularly remarkable social anxiety, nor being otherwise isolated like you, this new development begged the question of how much contemporary manifestations of disorders like that are facilitated by virtual sociality, if not outright caused by them. Are people with a propensity toward social anxiety disorders helped or hindered by the virtual? Are we seeing a rise in social anxiety disorders commensurate with access to increasing avenues of online sociality?

Enjoyed the post, liking the blog… Good luck with your doctoral work!

I’m working on the issue of Iternet-addiction, I want to explore the forms and the cultural meaning of “new tech addictions”, especially from mobile tech and Internet, and secondly I want to compare these data with the research over old media (TV, gaming..) and “traditional” addictions (heroine, cocaine…).

Do you know if there are some ethnographies on media addiction or media consumption?

Thanks!
Stefano